Alien: Evolution
by Faith Darkholme
Summary: As the spaceship Starjammer glided through the silent reaches of the galaxy, the ship's scanners detected a garbled distress call from a remote and long dead planet. But all the technology on board could not protect the ship's crew from the living nightma
1. Seven Dreamers

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the X-Men, they are the property of Marvel. Similarly, I do not own Alien, it is the property of Twentieth Century Fox and this novelization is the property of Alan Dean Foster. I am making no money from this, so please don't sue. I mean, how much do really want my collection of Hugh Jackman posters?  
  
Author's Note: This is my first offering for X-Men Evolution, so please review! It is based on the novelization by Alan Dean Foster, so it differs slightly from the film. Enjoy and REVIEW!  
Oh, and the Starjammer is the name of a ship from the X-Men series, and Jason Wyngarde is Mastermind's real name.  
  
Chapter I: Seven Dreamers  
  
    Seven dreamers.   
    You must understand that they were not professional dreamers. Professional dreamers are highly paid, respected, much sought-after talents. Like the majority of us, these seven dreamt without effort or discipline. Dreaming professionally, so that one's dreams can be recorded and played back for the entertainment of others, is a much more demanding proposition. It requires the ability to regulate semiconscious creative impulses and to stratify imagination, an extraordinarily difficult combination to achieve. A professional dreamer is simultaneously the most organised of artists and the most spontaneous. A subtle weaver of speculation, not straightforward and clumsy like you or I. Or these certain seven sleepers.   
     Of them all, Rogue came closest to possessing that special potential. She had a little ingrained dream talent and more flexibility of imagination than her companions. But she lacked real inspiration and the powerful maturity of thought characteristic of the prodreamer.   
    She was very good at organising stores and cargo, at pigeonholing carton A in storage chamber B or matching up manifests. It was in the warehouse of the mind that her filing system went awry. Hopes and fears, speculation and half creations slipped haphazardly from compartment to compartment.   
    Warrant officer Rogue needed more self-control. The raw ornate thoughts lay waiting to be tapped, just below the surface of realisation. A little more effort, a greater intensity of self-recognition and she would have made a pretty good prodreamer. Or so she occasionally thought.   
    Captain Alex Masters now, he appeared lazy while being the best organised of all. Nor was he lacking in imagination. His beard was proof of that. Nobody took a beard into the freezers. Nobody except Alex. It was part of his personality, he'd explained to more than one curious shipmate. He'd no more part with his antique facial hair than with any other part of his anatomy. Captain of two ships Alex was: the interstellar tug _Starjammer_, and his body. Both would remain intact in dreaming as well as awake.   
    So he had the regulatory capacity, and a modicum of imagination. But a professional dreamer requires a deal more than a modicum of the last, and that's a deficiency that can't be compensated for by a disproportionate quantity of the first. Lance was no more realistic prodreamer material than Rogue.   
    Bobby Drake was less controlled in thought and action than was Alex, and possessed a far less imagination. He was a good executive officer. Never would he be a captain. That requires a certain drive coupled with the ability to command others, neither of which Bobby had been blessed with. His dreams were translucent, formless shadows compared to those of Alex, just as Bobby was a thinner, less vibrant echo of the captain. That did not make him less likeable. But prodreaming requires a certain extra energy, and Bobby barely had enough for day-to-day living.   
    Evan Daniels's dreams were not offensive, but they were less pastoral than Bobby's. There was little imagination in them at all. They were too specialised, and dealt only rarely with human things. One could expect nothing else from a ship's engineer.   
    Direct they were, and occasionally ugly. In wakefulness this deeply buried offal rarely showed, only when the engineer became irritated or angry. Most of the ooze and contempt fermenting at the bottom of his soul's cistern was kept well hidden. His shipmates never saw beyond the distilled Evan floating on top, never ad a glimpse of what was bubbling and brewing inside.   
    Jubilee was more the inspiration of dreamers than dreamer herself. In hypersleep her restless musings were filled with intersystem plottings and load factors cancelled out by fuel considerations. Occasionally imagination entered into such dream structures, but never in a fashion fit to stir the blood of others.   
    Evan and Sam Guthrie often imagined their own systems interplotting with hers. They considered the question of load factors and spatial juxtapositions in manner that would have infuriated Jubilee had she been aware of them. Such unauthorised musings they kept to themselves, securely locked in day dreams and night dreams, lest they make her mad. It would not do to upset Jubilee. As the _Starjammer's_ navigator she was the one primarily responsible for seeing them safely home, and that was the most exciting and desirable thing any space-faring man could imagine.   
    Sam was only listed as an engineering technician. That was a fancy way of saying he was just as smart and knowledgeable as Evan but lacked seniority. The two men formed an odd pair, unequal and utterly different to outsiders. Yet they coexisted and functioned together smoothly. In large part their success as friends and co-workers was due to Sam never intruding on Evan's mental ground. The tech was as solemn and phlegmatic in outlook and speech as Evan was voluble and volatile. Evan could rant for hours over the failure of a microchip circuitry, damning its ancestry back to the soil from which its rare earth constituents were first mined. Sam would patiently comment, 'right'.     For Sam, that single word was much more than a statement of opinion. It was an affirmation of self. For him, silence was the cleanest form of communication. In loquaciousness lay insanity.   
    And then there was Jason Wyngarde. Jason was the science officer, but that wasn't what made his dreams so funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. His dreams were the most professionally organised of all the crew. Of them all, his came nearest to matching his awakened self. Jason's dreams held absolutely no delusions.   
    That wasn't surprising if you really knew Jason. None of his six crewmates did, though. Jason knew himself well. If asked, he could have told you why he'd never become a prodreamer. None ever thought to ask, despite the fact that the science officer clearly found prodreaming more fascinating than the rest of them.   
    Oh, and there was the cat. Name of Destiny. Very ordinary housecat or, in this case, shipcat. Destiny was a large yellow queen of uncertain parentage and an independent mien, long accustomed to the vagaries of ship travel and the idiosyncrasies of humans who travelled through space. It too slept the cold sleep, and dreamt simple dreams of warm, dark places and gravity-bound mice.   
    Of all the dreamers she was the only contented one, though she could not be called an innocent.   
    It was a shame none of them were qualified as prodreamers, since each had more time to dream in the course of their work than any dozen professionals, despite the slowing of their dream pace by the cold sleep. Necessity made dreaming their principal avocation. A deep-space crew can't do anything in the freezers but sleep and dream. They might remain forever amateurs, but they had long ago become very competent ones.   
    Seven of them there were. Seven quiet dreamers in search of a nightmare.   
    While it possessed a consciousness of sorts, the _Starjammer_ did not dream. It did not need to, any more than it needed the preserving effect of the freezers. If it did dream, such musings must have been brief and fleeting, since it never slept. It worked, and maintained, and made sure its hibernating human complement stayed a step ahead of ever-ready death, which followed the cold sleep like a vast grey shark behind a ship at sea.   
    Evidence of the _Starjammer's_ unceasing mechanical vigilance was everywhere on the ship, in soft hums and lights that formed the breath of instrumental sentience. It permeated the very fabric of the vessel, extended sensors to check every circuit and strut. It had sensors outside too, monitoring the pulse of the cosmos. These sensors had fastened on to an electromagnetic anomaly.   
    One portion of the _Starjammer's_ brain was very particularly adept at distilling sense out of anomalies. It had thoroughly chewed this one up, found the flavour puzzling, examined the results of analysis, and reached a decision. Slumbering instrumentalities were awakened; dormant circuits again regulated the flow of electrons. In celebration of this decision, banks of brilliant lights winked on, life signs of stirring mechanical breath.   
    A distinctive beeping sounded, though as yet there were only artificial tympanums to hear and acknowledge. It was a sound not heard on the _Starjammer_ for some time, and it signified an infrequent happening.   
    Within this awakening bottle of clicks and flashes, of devices conversing with each other, lay a special room. Within this room of white metal lay seven cocoons of snow-coloured metal and plastic.   
    A new noise filled this chamber, an explosive exhalation that filled it with freshly scrubbed, breathable atmosphere. Mankind had willingly placed himself in this position, trusting in little tin gods like the _Starjammer_ to provide him with the breath of life when he could not do so himself.   
    Extensions of that half-sentient electronic being now tested the newly exuded air and pronounced it satisfactory for sustaining life in puny organics such as men. Additional lights flared, more linkages closed. Without fanfare, the lids on the seven chrysalises opened, and the caterpillar shapes within began to emerge once more into the light.   
    Seen shorn of their dreams, the seven members of the _Starjammer's_ crew were even less impressive than they'd been in hypersleep. For one thing, they were dripping wet from the preservative cryosleep fluid that had filled and surrounded their bodies. However analeptic, slime of any sort is not becoming.   
    For another, they were naked, and the slime was a poor substitute for the slimming and shaping effects of the artificial skins called clothes.   
    "Jesus," muttered Jubilee, disgustedly wiping fluid from her shoulders and sides, "am I cold!" She stepped out of the coffin that preserved life instead of death, began fumbling in a nearby compartment. Using the towel she found there she commenced wiping the transparent syrup from her legs.   
    "Why the hell can't Cerebro warm the ship before breaking us out of storage?" She was working on her feet now, trying to remember where she'd dumped her clothes.     "You know why," Evan was too busy with his own sticky, tired self to bother staring at the nude navigator. "Company policy. Energy conservation, which translates as Company cheap. Why waste excess power warming the freezer section until the last possible second? Besides, it's always cold coming out of hypersleep. You know what the freezer takes your internal temperature down to."   
    "Yeah, I know. But it's still cold." She mumbled it, knowing Evan was perfectly correct but resenting having to admit it. She'd never cared much for the engineer.   
    Damn it Cerebro, she thought, seeing the goosebumps on her forearm, let's have some heat!   
    Alex was towelling himself off, dry-sponging away the last of the cryosleep gunk, and trying not to stare at something the others could not see. He'd noticed it even before rising from his freezer. The ship had arranged it so that he would.   
"Work'll warm us up fast enough." Jubilee muttered something unintelligible. "Everybody to your stations." Alex looked around. "I assume you all remember what you're getting paid for. Besides sleeping away your troubles."   
    Nobody smiled or bothered to comment. Evan glanced across to where his partner was sitting up in his freezer. "Morning. Still with us Sam?"   
    "Yo."   
    "Lucky us." That was the southern drawl of Rogue. She stretched, turning it into a more aesthetic movement than any of the others. "Nice to know ah prime conversationalist is as talkative as ever."   
    Sam just smiled, said nothing. He was as verbal as the machines he serviced, and it was a running joke within the septuple crew family. They were laughing with him at such times, not at him.   
    Alex was doing side twists, elbows parallel to the floor, hands together in front of his sternum. He fancied he could hear his long-unused muscles squeak. The flashing yellow light, eloquent as any voice, monopolised his thoughts. That devilish little sun-hued cyclops was the ship's way of telling them that they'd been awakened for something other than the end of their journey. He was already wondering why.   
    Jason sat up, looked around expressionlessly. For all the animation in his face, he might as well have still have been in hypersleep.   
    "I feel dead," Bobby muttered from his freezer, unaware that Jason was watching him. The executive officer was yawning, still not fully awake. It was Jason's professional opinion that the exec actually enjoyed hypersleep and would spend his whole life as a narcoleptic if so permitted.   
    Unaware of the science officer's opinion, Evan glanced over at Bobby, spoke pleasantly. "You look dead." He was aware that his own features probably looked no better. Hypersleep tired the skin as well as the muscles. As he watched Bobby's freezer, the exec finally sat up.   
    "Nice to be back." He blinked.   
    "Couldn't tell it to any of us, not with the time it takes you to wake up."   
    Bobby looked hurt. "That's a damn slander, Evan. I'm just slower than the rest of you, that's all."   
    "Yeah." The engineer didn't press the point, turned to the captain, who was absorbed with studying something out of the engineer's view. "Before we dock, maybe we'd better go over the bonus situation again."   
    Sam showed faint signs of enthusiasm, his first since awakening. "Yeah."   
    Evan continued, slipping on his boots. "Sam and I think we deserve a full share. Full bonus for successful completion plus salary and interest."   
    At least he knew deep sleep hadn't harmed his engineering staff, Alex mused tiredly. Barely conscious for a couple of minutes, they were already complaining.   
    "You two will get what you contracted for. No more and no less. Just like everybody else."   
    "Everybody else gets more than us," Sam said softly. For him, that constituted a major speech. It had no effect on the captain, however. Alex had no time now for trivialities or half-serious wordplays. That blinking light commanded his full attention, and choreographed his thoughts to the exclusion of all else.   
    "Everybody else deserves more than you two. Complain to the Company disburser if you want. Now get below."   
    "Complain to the Company." Evan was muttering unhappily as he watched Sam swing out of his coffin, commence drying his legs. "Might as well try complaining directly to God."   
    "Same thing." Sam was checking a weak service light on his own freezer compartment. Barely conscious, naked and dripping with liquid, he was already hard at work. He was the sort of person who could walk for days on a broken leg but was unable to ignore a malfunctioning toilet.   
    Alex started for the central computer room, called back over a shoulder. "One of you jokers get the cat."   
    It was Rogue who lifted a limp, yellowish form from one of the freezers. She wore a hurt expression. "You needn't be so indifferent about it." She stroked the soaked animal affectionately. "It's not a piece of equipment. Destiny is a member of the crew as much as the rest of us."   
    "More than some." Alex was watching Evan and Sam, fully dressed now, receding in the direction of engineering. "She doesn't fill my few on-board waking hours with complaints about salary or bonuses."   
    Rogue departed, the cat enveloped in a thick dry towel. Destiny was purring unsteadily, licking herself with great dignity. It was not her first time out of hypersleep. For the present, she would tolerate the ignominy of being carried.   
    Alex had finished drying himself. Now he touched a button set into the base of his coffin. A drawer slid silently outward on nearly frictionless bearings. It contained his clothing and few personal effects.   
    As he was dressing, Jason ambled over to stand nearby. The science officer kept his voice low, speaking as he finished seaming his clean shirt.   
    "Cerebro wants to talk to you?" As he whispered, he nodded in the direction of the flashing light on the suspended console nearby.   
    "I saw it right off." Alex slipped his arms into his shirt. "Hard yellow. Security one, not warning. Don't tell the others. If anything's seriously wrong, they'll find out soon enough." He slipped into an unpressed brown jacket, left it hanging open.   
    "It can't be too bad whatever it is." Jason sounded hopeful, gestured again at the slowly winking light. "It's only yellow, not red."   
    "For the moment." Alex was no optimist. "I'd have preferred to wake up to a nice, foresty green." He shrugged, tried to sound as hopeful as Jason. "Maybe the autochef's on the blink. That might be a blessing, considering what it calls food."   
    He attempted a smile, but failed. The _Starjammer_ was not human. It did not play practical jokes on its crew, and it would not have awakened them from hypersleep with a yellow warning light without a perfectly good reason. A malfunctioning autochef did not qualify for the latter.   
    Oh well. After several months of doing nothing but sleeping he had no right to complain if a few hours' honest sweat was now required of him . . .   
  
    The central computer room was little different from the other awake rooms on the _Starjammer_. A disarming kaleidoscope of lights and screens, readouts and gauges, it conveyed the impression of a wild party inhabited by a dozen drunken Christmas trees.   
    Settling himself into a thickly padded contour seat, Alex considered how to proceed. Jason took the seat opposite the Mind Bank, manipulated controls with more speed and ease than a man just out of hypersleep ought to have. The science officer's ability to handle machines was unmatched.   
    It was a special rapport Alex often wished he possessed. Still groggy from the after effects of hypersleep, he punched out a primary request. Distortion patterns chased each other across the screen, settled down to form recognisable words. Alex checked his wording found it standard.   
    ALERT OVERMONITORING FUNCTION FOR MATRIX DISPLAY AND INQUIRY.   
    The ship found it acceptable also, and Cerebro's reply was immediate. OVERMONITOR ADDRESS MATRIX. Columns of informational categorisations lined up for inspection beneath this terse legend.   
    Alex examined the long list of fine print, located the section he wanted, and typed in, COMMAND PRIORITY ALERT.   
    OVERMONITOR FUNCTION READY FOR INQUIRY, Cerebro responded. Computer minds were not programmed for verbosity. Cerebro was no exception to the rule.   
    Which was fine with Alex. He wasn't in a talkative mood. He typed briefly, WHAT'S THE STORY CEREBRO?, and waited . . .   
  
    You couldn't say that the bridge of the _Starjammer_ was spacious. Rather, it was somewhat less claustrophobic than some of the ship's other rooms and chambers, but not by much. Five contour seats awaited their respective occupants. Lights flashed patiently on and off at multiple consoles, while numerous screens of various shapes and sizes also awaited the arrival of humans who were prepared to tell them what to display. A large bridge would have been an expensive frivolity, since the crew spent most of its flight time motionless in the freezers. It was designed strictly for work, not for relaxation or entertainment. The people who worked there knew this as thoroughly as did the machines.   
     A seal door slid silently into the wall. Bobby entered, followed closely by Rogue, Jubilee and Jason. They made their way to their respective stations, settled behind consoles with the ease and familiarity of old friends greeting one another after a long time apart.   
    A fifth seat remained empty, would continue unoccupied until Alex returned from his little tête-à-tête with Cerebro, the _Starjammer's_ Mind Bank computer. The nickname had been given because Cerebro was the brain of the ship, not merely in jest. People grew very serious when talking about the machinery responsible for keeping them alive. For its part, the machine accepted the designation with equal solemnity, if not the emotional overtones.   
    Their clothing was as relaxed as their bodies, casual travesties of crewmember uniforms. Each reflected the personality of the wearer. Shirts and slacks, all were rumpled and worn after years of storage. So were the bodies they encased.   
    The first sound spoken on the bridge in many years summed up the feelings of all present, even though they couldn't understand them. Destiny was meowing when Rogue set her on the deck. She changed that to a purr, sliding sensuously round Rogue's ankles as she snuggled herself into the high-backed chair.   
    "Plug us in." Bobby was checking out his own console, caressing the automatics with his eyes, hunting for contrasts and uncertainties as Jubilee and Rogue commenced throwing necessary switches and thumbing requisite controls.   
    There was a flurry of visual excitement as new lights and colours migrated across readout panels and screens. It gave the feeling that the instruments were pleased by the reappearance of their organic counterparts and were anxious to display their talents at first opportunity.   
    Fresh numbers and words appeared on readouts in front of him. Bobby correlated them with well-remembered ones imprinted in his mind. "Looks okay so far. Give us something to stare at."   
    Jubilee's fingers danced an arpeggio on a tightly clustered rank of controls. Viewscreens came alive all over the bridge, most suspended from the ceiling for easier inspection. The navigator examined the square eyes closest to her seat, frowned immediately. Much that she saw was expected. Too much was not. The most important thing, the anticipated thing that should be dominating their vision, was absent. So important was it that it negated the normality of everything else.   
    "Where's Earth?"   
    Examining his own screen carefully, Bobby discerned blackness speckled with stars and little else. Granting the possibility that they'd emerged from hyperspace too soon, the home system should at least be clear on the screen. But Sol was as invisible as the expected Earth.   
    "You're the navigator, Jubilee. You tell me."   
    There was a central sun fixated squarely in the middle of the multiple screens. But it wasn't Sol. The colour was wrong and the computer-enhanced dots orbiting it were worse than wrong. They were impossible, improper of shape, of size, of number.   
    "That's not our system," Rogue said numbly, giving voice to the obvious.   
    "Maybe our trouble's just our orientation, not that of the stars." Bobby didn't sound very convincing, even to himself. "Ships have been known to come out of hyperspace ass-backward to their intended destination. That could be Centauri at top amplification. Sol might be behind us. Let's take a scan before we do any panicking." He did not add that the system visible on the screen resembled that of Centauri as much as it did that of Sol.   
    Sealed cameras on the battered skin of the _Starjammer_ began to move silently in the vacuum of space, hunting through infinity for hints of a warm Earth. Secondary cameras on the _Starjammer's_ cargo, a monstrous aggregation of bulky forms and metal shapes, contributed to their own line of sight. Inhabitants of an earlier age would have been astonished to know that the _Starjammer_ was towing a considerable quantity of crude oil through the void between the stars, encased in its own, steadily functioning refinery.   
    That oil would be finished petrochemicals by the time the _Starjammer_ arrived in orbit around Earth. Such methods were necessary. While mankind had long developed marvellous, efficient substitutes for powering their civilisation, they ad done so only after greedy individuals had sucked the last drop of petroleum from a drained Earth.   
    Fusion and solar power ran all of man's machines. But they couldn't substitute for petrochemicals. A fusion engine could not produce plastics, for example. The modern worlds could exist without power sooner than they could without plastic. Hence the presence of the _Starjammer's_ viable, if historically incongruous, cargo of machinery and the noisome black liquid it patiently processed.   
    The only system the cameras picked up was the one set neatly in the centre of the various screens, the one with the improper necklace of planets circling an off-colour star. There was no doubt now in Bobby's mind and less than that in Jubilee's that the _Starjammer_ intended that system to be their immediate destination.   
    Still, it could be an error in time and not space. Sol could be the system located in the distance just to this star's left or right. There was a sure way to find out.   
    "Contact traffic control." Bobby was chewing his lower lip. "If we can pick anything up from them, we'll know we're in the right quadrant. If Sol's anywhere nearby, we'll receive a reply from one of the outsystem relay stations.     Rogue's fingers nicked different controls. "This is the deep-space commercial tug _Starjammer_, registration number one eight zero, two four six, en route to Earth with bulk cargo crude petroleum and appropriate refinery. Calling Antarctica traffic control. Do y'all read me? Over."     Only the faint, steady hiss of different suns replied over the speakers. Near Rogue's feet, Destiny the cat purred in harmony with the stars.   
    Rogue tried again. "Deep-space commercial tug _Starjammer_ calling Sol/Antarctica traffic control. We are experiencing navigational fix difficulties. This is a priority call; please respond." Still only the nervous stellar sizzle-pop. Rogue looked worried. "Mayday. Mayday. Tug _Starjammer_ calling Sol traffic control or any other vessel in listening range. Mayday. Respond."   
    The unjustified distress call (Rogue knew they were not in any immediate danger) went unanswered and unchallenged. Discouraged, she shut off the transmitter, but left the receiver on all-channels open incase another broadcasting ship happened to pass close by.   
    "I knew we couldn't be near our system," Rogue mumbled. "I know the area." She nodded to the screen hanging above her own station. "That's nowhere near Sol and neither are we."   
    "Keep trying," Bobby ordered her. He turned back to face Jubilee. "So then where are we? You got a reading yet?"   
    "Give me a minute, will you. This isn't easy. We're way out in the boondocks."   
    "Keep trying."   
    "Working on it."   
    Several minutes of intense searching and computer co-operation produced a tight grin of satisfaction on her face. "Found it . . . and us. We're just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven't even reached the outer populated ring yet. Too deep to grab onto a navigation beacon yet, let alone a Sol traffic relay."   
    "So what the hell are we doing here?" Bobby wondered aloud. "If there's nothing wrong with the ship and we're not home, why did Cerebro defrost us?"     It was only coincidence and not a direct response to the exec's musing, but an attention-to-standby horn began its loud and imperative beeping . . .   
  
    Near the stern of the _Starjammer_ was a vast chamber mostly filled with complex, powerful machinery. The ship's heart lived there, the extensive propulsion system that enabled the vessel to distort space, ignore time, and thumb its metallic nose at Einstein . . . and only incidentally power the devices that kept her fragile human crew alive.   
    At the fore end of this massive, humming complex was a glass cubicle, a transparent pimple on the tip of the hyperdrive iceberg. Within, settled in contour seats, rested two men. They were responsible for the health and well-being of the ship's drive, a situation both were content with. They took care of it and it took care of them.   
    Most of the time it took perfectly good care of itself, which enabled them to spend their time on more enlightening, worthwhile projects such as drinking beer and swapping dirty stories. At the moment it was Evan's turn to ramble. He was reciting for the hundredth time the tale of the engineering apprentice and the free-fall cathouse. It was a good story, one that never failed to elicit a knowing snigger or two from the silent Sam and a belly-laugh from the teller himself.   
    " . . . and so the madam busts in one me, all worried and mad at the same time." the engineer was saying, "and insists we come and rescue this poor sap. Guess he didn't know what he was getting into." As usual, he roared at the pun.   
    "You remember that place. All four walls, floor and ceiling perfectly mirrored, with no bed. Just a velvet net suspended in the centre of the room to confine your activities and keep you from bouncing off the walls and zero-gee." He shook his head in disapproving remembrance.   
    "That's no place for amateurs to fool around, no sir! Guess this kid got embarrassed or cajoled into doing it by his crewmates.   
    "From what the girl involved told me later, as she was cleaning herself up, they started off fine. But then they started to spin and he panicked. Couldn't stop their tumbling. She tried, but it takes two to stop as well as start in free-fall. What with the mirrors messing up his sense of position and all, plus the free tumbling, he couldn't stop throwing up." Evan downed another mouthful of beer. "Never saw such a mess in your natural life. Bet they're still working on those mirrors."   
    "Yeah." Sam smiled appreciatively.   
    Evan sat still, letting the last vestiges of the memory fade from his mind. They left a pleasantly lascivious residue behind. Absently he flipped a key switch over his console. A gratifyingly green light appeared above it, held steady.   
    "How's your light?"   
    "Green," admitted Sam, after repeating the switch-and-check procedure with his own instrumentation.   
    "Mine too." Evan studied the bubbles within the beer. Several hours out of hypersleep and he was bored already. The engine room ran itself with quiet efficiency, wasted no time making him feel extraneous. There was no one to argue with except Sam, and you couldn't work up a really invigorating debate with a man who spoke in monosyllables and for whom a complete sentence constituted an exhausting ordeal.   
    "I still think Alex is deliberately ignoring our complaints." He ventured. "Maybe he can't direct that we receive full bonuses, but he is the captain. But he could put in a request, or at least a decent word for the two of us. That'd be a big help." He studied a readout. It displayed numbers marching off plus or minus to right and left. The fluorescent red line running down its centre rested exactly on zero, splitting the desired indication of neutrality neatly in two.   
    Evan would have continued his rambling, alternating stories and complaints had not the beeper above them abruptly commenced its monotonous call.   
    "Christ. What is it now? Can't let a guy get comfortable before somebody starts farting around."   
    "Right." Sam leaned forward to hear better as the speaker cleared a distant throat.   
    It was Rogue's voice. "Report to the mess."   
    "Can't be lunch, isn't supper." Evan was confused. "Either we're standing by to offload cargo or . . ." he glanced questioningly at his companion.   
    "Find out soon," said Sam.   
    As they made their way towards the mess, Evan surveyed the less than antiseptically clean walls of 'C' corridor with distaste. "I'd like to know why they never come down here. This is where the real work is."   
    "Same reason we have half a share to their one. Our time is their time. That's the way they see it."   
    "Well I'll tell you something. It stinks." Evan's tone left no doubt that he was talking about something other than the odour the corridor walls were impregnated with . . .   
  



	2. Planetfall

**Disclaimer**: Contrary to popular belief, I don't own X-Men or Alien, so please don't sue me nice people at Marvel and Fox.  
  
Author's Note: In the first chapter I referred to the captain as Alex Masters. However, that was wrong, because Warren Worthington was meant to be the captain, so where it said Alex, imagine it said Warren, 'kay.  
  
Oh, and if you like this fic, then you need to read Tyriel's Aliens:Evolution, the continuation of the Alien series. Read it!  
  
Chapter II: Planetfall  
  
    Though far from comfortable, the mess was just big enough to hold the entire crew. Since they rarely ate their meals simultaneously (the always-functioning autochef indirectly encouraging individuality in eating habits), it hadn't been designed with comfortable seating for seven in mind. They shuffled from foot to foot, bumping and jostling each other and trying not to get on each other's nerves.  
    Evan and Sam weren't happy and took no pains to hide their displeasure. Their sole consolation was that there was nothing wrong with engineering and that whatever they'd been revived to deal with was the responsibility of persons other than themselves. Rogue had already filled them in on the disconcerting absence of their intended destination.   
    Evan considered that they would all have to re-enter hypersleep, a messy and uncomfortable process at best, and cursed under his breath. He resented anything that kept him separated from his end-of-voyage paycheck.   
     "We know we haven't arrived at Sol, captain." Bobby spoke for the others, who were all eyeing Warren expectantly. "We're nowhere near home and the ship sees fit to hustle us all out of hypersleep. Time we find out why."   
     "Time you did." Warren agreed readily. "As you all know," he began importantly, "Cerebro is programmed to interrupt our journey and bring us out of hyperdrive and sleep if certain specific conditions arise." He paused for effect, said, "They have."   
     "It would have to be pretty serious." Jubilee was watching Destiny the cat play with a blinking telltale. "You know that. Bringing a full crew out of hypersleep isn't lightly done. There's always some risk involved."   
     "Tell me about it." Evan muttered it so softly only Sam could overhear.   
     "You'll be happy to learn," Warren continued, "that the emergency we've been awakened to deal with does not involve the _Starjammer_. Cerebro says we're in perfect shape." A couple of heartfelt 'amens' sounded in the cramped mess.   
     "The emergency lies elsewhere - specifically, in the unlisted system we've recently entered. We should be closing on the particular planet concerned right now." He glanced at Jason, who rewarded him with a confirming nod. "We've picked up a transmission from another source. It's garbled and apparently took Cerebro some time to puzzle out, but it's definitely a distress signal."   
     "Whoa, that doesn't make sense." Jubilee looked puzzled herself. "Of all standard transmissions, emergency calls are the most straightforward and the least complex. Why would Cerebro have the slightest trouble interpreting one?"   
     "Cerebro speculates that this is anything but a 'standard' transmission. It's an acoustic signal, which repeats at intervals of twelve seconds. That much is not unusual. However she believes the signal is not of human origin."   
    _That_ provoked some startled muttering. When the first excitement had faded, he explained further. "Cerebro's not positive. That's what I don't understand. I've never seen a computer show confusion before. Ignorance, yes, but not confusion. This may be a first.   
     "What is important is that she's certain enough it's a distress signal to pull us out of hypersleep."   
     "So what?" Sam appeared sublimely unconcerned.   
    Bobby replied with just a hint of irritation. "Come on, man. You know your manual. We're obliged under section B2 of Company in-transit directives to render whatever aid and assistance we can in such situations. Whether the call is human or not."   
    Evan kicked at the deck in disgust. "Christ. I hate to say this, but we're a commercial tug with a big, hard-to-handle cargo. Not a damn rescue unit. This kind of duty's not in our contract." He brightened slightly. "Of course, if there's some extra money involved for such work . . ."   
     "You'd better read your own contract." Jason recited as neatly as the main computer he was so proud of. "'Any systematic transmission indicating possible intelligent origin must be investigated.' At penalty of full forfeiture of all pay and bonuses due on journey's completion. Not a word about bonus money for helping someone in distress."   
    Evan gave the deck another kick, kept his mouth shut. Neither he nor Sam considered himself the hero type. Anything that could force a ship down on a strange world might treat them in an equally inconsiderate manner. Not that they had any evidence that this unknown caller had been forced down, but being a realist in a harsh universe, he was inclined to be pessimistic.   
    Sam simply saw the detour in terms of his delayed paycheck.   
     "We're going in. That's all there is to it." Warren eyed them each in turn. He was about fed up with the two of them. He no more enjoyed this kind of detour than they did, and was as anxious to be home and offloading their cargo as they were, but there were times when letting off steam crossed over into disobedience.   
     "Right," said Sam sardonically.   
     "Right _what_?"   
    The engineering tech was no fool. The combination of Warren's tone combined with the expression on his face, told him it was time to ease up.   
     "Right . . . we're going in." Warren continued to stare at him and he added with a smile, "Sir."   
    The captain turned a jaundiced eye on Evan, but that worthy was now subdued.   
     "Can we land on it?" he asked Jason.   
     "Somebody did."   
     "That's what I mean," he said significantly. "'Land' is a benign term. It implies a sequence of events successfully carried out, resulting in the gentle and safe touchdown of a ship on a hard surface. We're faced with a distress call. That implies events other than benign. Let's go find out what's going on . . . but let's go quietly, with boots in hand."   
    There was an illuminated cartographic table on the bridge. Warren, Bobby, Rogue, and Jason stood at opposite points of its compass, while Lambert sat at her station.   
     "There it is." Warren fingered a glowing point on the table. He looked around the table. "Something I want everyone to hear."   
    They resumed their seats as he nodded to Jubilee. Her fingers were poised over a particular switch. "Okay, let's hear it. Watch the volume."   
    The navigator flipped the switch. Static and hissing sounds filled the bridge. These cleared suddenly, were replaced by a sound that sent shivers up Bobby's back and unholy crawling things down Rogue's. It lasted for twelve seconds, then was replaced by the static.  
     "Good God." Bobby's expression was drawn.   
    Jubilee switched off the speakers. It was human on the bridge again.   
     "What the hell is it?" Rogue looked as if she'd just seen something dead on her lunch plate. "It don't sound like any distress signal ah've ever heard."   
     "That's what Cerebro calls it," Warren told them. "Calling it 'alien' turns out to have been something of an understatement."   
     "Maybe it's a voice." Jubilee paused, considered her just-uttered words, found the implications they raised unpleasant, and tried to pretend she hadn't said them.   
     "We'll know soon. Have you homed in on it?"   
     "I've found the section of planet." Jubilee turned gratefully to her console, relieved to be able to deal with mathematics instead of disquieting thoughts. "We're close enough."   
     "Cerebro wouldn't a pulled us outta hypersleep unless we were," Rogue murmured.   
     "It's coming from ascension six minutes, twenty seconds; declination minus thirty-nine degrees, two seconds."   
     "Show me the whole thing on a screen," Warren ordered.   
    The navigator hit a succession of buttons. One of the bridge flickered, gifted them with a bright dot.   
     "High albedo. Can you get it a little closer?"   
     "No. You have to look at it from this distance. That's what I'm going to do." Immediately the screen zoomed in tighter on the point of light, revealing an unspectacular, slightly oblate shape sitting in emptiness.   
     "Smart ass." Warren voiced it without malice. "Are you sure that's it? It's a crowded system."   
     "That's it, alright. Just a planetoid, really. Maybe twelve hundred kilometres, no more."   
     "Any rotation?"   
     "Yeah. 'Bout two hours, working off the initial figures. Tell you better in ten minutes."   
     "That's good enough for now. What's the gravity?"   
    Jubilee studied different readouts. "Point eight six. Must be pretty dense stuff."   
     "Don't tell Evan and Sam," said Rogue. "They'll be thinking it's solid heavy metal and wander off somewhere prospecting before we can check out our unknown broadcaster."   
    Jason's observation was more prosaic. "You can walk on it." They settled down to working on orbiting procedure . . .   
  
    The _Starjammer_ edged close to the tiny world, trailing its vast cargo of tanks and refinery equipment.   
     "Approaching orbital apogee. Mark. Twenty seconds. Nineteen, eighteen . . ." Jubilee continued to count down while her mates worked steadily around her.   
     "Roll ninety-tow degrees starboard yaw," announced Bobby, thoroughly business like.   
    The tug and refinery rotated, performing a massive pirouette in space. Light appeared at the stern of the tug as her secondary engines fired briefly.   
     "Equatorial orbit nailed," declared Jason. Below them the miniature world rotated unconcernedly.   
     "Give me an EC pressure reading."   
    Jason examined gauges, spoke without turning to face Warren. "Three point four five en slashed em squared . . . about five psia, sir."   
     "Shout if it changes."   
     "You worried about redundancy managing disabling CMGS control while we're busy elsewhere?"   
     "Yeah."   
     "CMGS control is inhibited via DAS/DCS. We'll augment with TACS and monitor through ATMDC and computer interface. Feel better now?"   
     "A lot." Jason was a funny sort, kind of coldly friendly, but supremely competent. Nothing rattled him. Warren felt confident with the science officer backing him up, watching his decisions. "Prepare to disengage from platform." He flicked a switch, addressed a small pickup. "Engineering, preparing to disengage."     "L alignment on port and starboard is green," reported Evan, all hint of usual sarcasm gone.   
     "Green on spinal umbilical severance," added Sam.   
     "Crossing the terminator," Jubilee informed them all. "Entering nightside." Below, a dark line split thick clouds, leaving them brightly reflecting on one side, dark as a tomb on the other.   
     "It's coming up. It's coming up. Stand by." Jubilee threw switches in sequence. "Stand by. Fifteen seconds . . . ten . . . five . . . four. Three. Two. One. Lock."   
     "Disengage," ordered Warren curtly.   
Tiny puffs of gas showed between the _Starjammer_ and the ponderous bulk of the refinery. The two artificial structures, one tiny and inhabited, the other enormous and deserted, drifted slowly apart. Warren watched the separation intently on number two screen.   
     "Umbilicals clear," Rogue announced after a short pause.   
     "Precision corrected," Bobby leaned back in his seat, relaxing for a few seconds. "All clean and clear. Separation successful. No damage."   
     "Check here," added Jubilee.   
    Warren glanced over at his navigator. "You sure we've left her in a steady orbit? I don't want the whole two billion tons dropping and burning while we're downstairs. Atmosphere's not thick enough to give us a safe umbrella.   
    Jubilee checked a readout. "She'll stay up here for a year or so, easy sir."   
     "All right. The money's safe and so's our skulls. Let's take it down. Prepare for atmospheric flight." Five humans worked busily, each engrossed in his or her assigned tasks. Destiny the cat sat on a port console and studied the approaching clouds.   
     "Dropping." Jubilee's attention was fixed on one particular gauge. "Fifty thousand metres. Down. Down. Forty-nine thousand. Entering atmosphere."   
    Warren watched his own instrumentation, tried to evaluate and evaluate the dozens of steadily shifting figures. Deep-space travel was a question of paying proper homage to one's instruments and let Cerebro do the hard work. Atmospheric flight was another story entirely. For a change, it was a pilot's work instead of a machine's.   
    Brown and grey clouds kissed the underside of the ship.   
     "Watch it. Looks nasty down there."   
    How lahke Warren, Rogue thought. Somewhere in the dun-hued hell below another ship was bleating a regular, inhuman, frightening distress call. The world itself was unlisted, which meant they'd begin from scratch where such things as atmospheric peculiarities, terrain, and such were concerned. Yet to Warren, it was no more or less than 'nasty'. She'd often wondered what a man as competent as their captain was doing squiring an unimportant tub like the _Starjammer_ around the cosmos.   
     The answer, could she have read his mind, would have surprised her. He liked it.   
     "Vertical descent computed and entered. Correcting course slightly," Jubilee informed them. "On course now, homing. Locked and we're headed in straight."   
     "Check. How's our plotting going to square with secondary propulsion in this weather?"   
     "We're doing okay so far, sir. I can't say for sure until we get under these clouds. If we can get under them."   
     "Good enough." He frowned at a readout, touched a button. The reading changed to a more pleasing one. "Let me know if you think we're going to lose it."   
     "Will do."   
    The tug struck an invisibility. Invisible to the eye, not to her instruments. She bounced once, twice, a third time, then settled down into the thick wad of cloud. He ease of the entry was a tribute to Jubilee's skills at plotting and Warren's as a pilot.   
    It did not last. Within the ocean of air, heavy currents swirled. They began buffeting the descending ship.   
     "Turbulence," Rogue wrestled with her own controls.   
     "Give us navigation and landing lights." Warren tried to sort sense from the maelstrom obscuring the viewscreen. "Maybe we can spot something visually."   
     "No substitute for the instruments," said Jason. "Not in this."   
     "No substitute for maximum input, either. Anyhow, I like to look."   
    Powerful lights came on beneath the _Starjammer_. They pierced the cloud waves only weakly, did not provide the clear field of vision Warren so badly desired. But they did illuminate the dark screens, thereby illuminating both the bridge and the mental atmosphere thereon. Jubilee felt less like they were flying through ink.   
    Evan and Sam couldn't see the cloud cover outside, but they could feel it. The engine room gave a sudden shift, rocked to the opposite side, shifted sharply again.   
    Evan swore under his breath. "What was that? You hear that?"   
     "Yeah." Sam examined a readout nervously. "Pressure drop in intake number three. We've lost a shield." He punched buttons. "Yep, three's gone. Dust pouring through the intake."   
     "Shut her down, shut her down."   
     "What do you think I'm doing?"   
     "Great. So we've got a secondary full of dust."   
     "No problem . . . I hope." Sam adjusted a control. "I'll bypass number three and vent the stuff out as it comes in."   
     "Damage is done, though." Evan didn't like to think what the presence of wind-blown abrasives might have done to the intake lining. "What the hell are we flying through? Clouds or rocks? If we don't crash, dollars to your aunt's cherry we get an electrical fire somewhere in the relevant circuitry."   
    Unaware of the steady cursing taking place in engineering, the five on the bridge went about the business of trying to set the tug down intact and near to the signal source.   
     "Approaching point of origin." Jubilee studied a gauge. "Closing at twenty-five kilometres. Twenty. Ten, five . . ."   
     "Slowing and turning." Warren leaned over on the manual helm.   
     "Correct course three degrees, four minutes right." He complied with the directions. "That's got it. Five kilometres to centre of search circle and steady."   
     "Tightening now." Warren fingered the helm once more.   
     "Three kiloms. Two." Jubilee sounded just a mite excited, though whether from the danger or the nearness of the signal source Warren couldn't tell. "We're practically circling above it now."   
     "Nice work Jubilee. Rogue, what's the terrain like? Find us a landing spot."   
     "Working, sir." She tried several panels, her expression of disgust growing deeper as unacceptable readings came back. Warren continued to make sure the ship held its target in the centre of its circling flight path as Rogue fought to make sense of the unseen surface.   
     "Visual lahne of sight impossible."   
    "We can see that," Bobby grumbled. "Or rather, can't see it." The rare half-glimpses the instruments had given him of the ground hadn't put him in a pleasant frame of mind. The occasional readings had hinted at extensive desolation, a hostile, barren desert of a world.   
     "Radar gives me noise." Rogue wished electronics would react to imprecations as readily as people. "Sonar gives me noise. Infra-red, noise. Hang on, ah'm gonna try ultra-violet. Spectrum's high enough not to interfere." A moment, followed by the appearance on a crucial readout of some gratifying lines at last, followed by brightly lit words and a computer sketch.   
     "That did it."   
     "And a place to land on it?"   
    Rogue looked fully relaxed now. "As near as ah can tell, we can set down anywhere you like. Readings say it's flat below us. Totally flat."   
    Warren's thoughts turned to smooth lava, of a cool but deceptively thin crust barely concealing molten destruction. "Yeah, but flat what? Water, pahoehoe, sand? Bounce something off, Bobby. Get us a determination. I'll take her down low enough so that we loose most of this interference. If it's flat, I can get us close without too much trouble."   
    Bobby flicked switches. "Monitoring. Analytics activated. Still getting noise."   
    Carefully, Warren lost altitude. Jubilee watched gauges. They were more than high enough for a safe clearance, but at the speed they were travelling that could change rapidly if anything went wrong with the ship's engines, or if an other-worldly downdraft should materialise. Nor could they cut their speed further. In this wind, that would mean a critical loss of control.   
     "Clearing, clearing . . . that's got it!" Bobby studied readouts and contour lines, provided by the ship's imaging scanner. "It was molten once, but not anymore. Not for a long time, according to the analytics. It's mostly basalt, some rhyolite, with occasional lava overlays. Everything's cool and solid now. No sign of tectonic activity." He activated other instruments to probe deeper into the mysteries of the tiny world's skin.   
     "No faults of any consequence below us or in the immediate vicinity. Should be a nice place to set down."   
    Warren thought briefly. "You're positive about that surface composition?"   
     "It's too old to be anything else." The executive officer sounded a touch irritated. "I know enough to check age data along with composition. Think I'd risk putting us down inside a volcano?"   
     "Alright, alright. Sorry. Just checking. I haven't done a landing without charts and beacons since school training. I'm a bit nervous."   
     "Aren't we all?" admitted Jubilee readily.   
     "If we're set then?" No one objected. "Let's take her down. I'm going to spiral in as best I can in this wind, try to get us as close as possible. But you keep a tight signal watch on, Jubilee. I don't want us coming down on top of that calling ship. Warn me for distance if we get too close." His tone was intense in the cramped room.   
    Adjustments were made, commands given and executed by faithful electronic servants. The _Starjammer_ commenced to follow a steady spiralling path surfaceward, fighting cross-winds and protesting gusts of black air every metre of the way.   
     "Fifteen kilometres and descending," announced Rogue evenly. "Twelve . . . ten . . . eight." Warren touched a control. "Slowing rate. Five . . . three . . . two. One kilometre." The same control was furthered altered. "Slowing. Activate landing engines."   
     "Locked." Bobby was working furiously at his console. "Descent now computer monitored." A steady hum filled the bridge as Cerebro took over control of their drop, regulating the last metres of descent than the best human pilot could have managed.   
     "Descending on landers," Bobby told them.   
     "Kill engines."   
    Warren performed a final pre-landing check, flipped several switches to OFF. "Engines off. Lifter quads functioning properly." A steady throbbing filled the bridge.   
     "Nine hundred metres an' dropping." Rogue watched her console. "Eight hundred. Seven hundred. Six." She continued to count off the rate of descent in hundreds of metres. Before long she was reciting it in tens.   
    At five metres the tug hesitated, hovering on its landers above the storm-wracked, night-shrouded surface.   
     "Struts down." Bobby was already moving to execute the required action as Warren was giving the order. A faint whine filled the bridge. Several thick metal legs unfolded beetle-like from the ship's belly, drifted tantalizingly close to the still unseen rock below them.   
     "Four metres . . . uff!" Rogue stopped. So did the _Starjammer_ as landing struts contacted unyielding rock. Massive shock absorbers cushioned the contact.   
     "We're down."   
    Something snapped. A minor circuit, probably, or perhaps an overload not properly compensated for, not handled fast enough. A terrific shock ran through the ship. The metal of the hull vibrated, producing an eerie, metallic moan throughout the ship.   
     "Lost it! Lost it!" Bobby was shouting as the lights on the bridge went out. Gauges screamed for attention as the failure snowballed back through the interdependent metal nerve ends of the _Starjammer_.   
    When the shock struck engineering, Evan and Sam were preparing to crack another set of beers. A line of ranked pipes set into the moulded ceiling promptly exploded. Three panels in the control cubicle burst into flame, while a nearby pressure valve swelled, then burst.   
    The lights went out and they fumbled for hand beams, while Evan tried to find the back-up generator, which provided power in the absence of direct service from the operating engines.   
    Controlled confusion reigned on the bridge. When the yells and questions had died down, it was Jubilee who voiced the most common thought.   
     "Secondary generator should have kicked over by now." She took a step, bumped a knee hard against a console.   
     "Wonder what's keeping it." Bobby moved to the wall, felt along it. Backup landing controls . . . here. He ran his fingers over several familiar knobs. Aft lock stud . . . there. Nearby ought to be . . . his hand fastened on an emergency lightbar, switched it on. A dim glow revealed several ghostly silhouettes.   
    With Bobby's light serving as a guide, Warren and Jubilee located their own lightbars. The three beams combined to provide enough illumination to work by.   
     "What happened? Why hasn't the secondary taken over? And what caused the outage?"   
    Rogue thumbed the intercom. "Engineering room, what happened? What's our status?"   
     "Lousy." Evan sounded busy, mad, and worried all at once. A distant buzzing, like the frantic wings of some colossal insect, formed a backdrop to his words. These words rose and faded, as though the speaker were having trouble staying in range of the omni-directional intercom pickup.   
     "Goddam dust in the engines, that's what happened. Caught it coming down. Guess we didn't close it off and clean it out in time. Got an electrical fire back here."   
     "It's big," was Sam's only addition to the conversation. He sounded weak with distance.   
    There was a pause, during which they could make out only the _whoosh_ of chemical extinguishers over the speaker. "The intakes got clogged," Sam was finally able to tell the anxious knot of listeners. "We overheated bad, burnt out a whole cell, I think. Christ, it's really breaking loose down here . . ."   
    Warren glanced over at Rogue. "Those two sound busy enough. Somebody give me the critical answer. Something went _bang_. I hope to hell it was only back in their department, but it could be worse. Has the hull been reached?" He took a deep breath. "If so, where and how badly?"   
    Rogue performed a quick scan of the ship's emergency pressurisation gauges, then made a rapid eye search via individual cabin diagrams before she felt confident in replying with certainty. "Ah don't see anything. We still have full pressure in all compartments. If there is a hole, it's too small to show and the self-seal's already managed to plug it."   
    Jason studied his own console. Along with the others, it was independently powered in the event of a massive energy failure such as the one they were presently experience. "Air in all compartments shows no sign of contamination from outside atmosphere. I think we're still tight, sir."   
     "Best news I've had in sixty seconds. Bobby, hit the exterior screens that are still powered up."   
    The executive officer adjusted a trio of toggles. There was a noticeable flickering, hints of faint geological forms, then complete darkness.   
     "Nothing. We're blind outside as well as in here. Have to get secondary power at least before we can have a look at where we are. Batteries aren't enough for even minimal imaging."   
    The audio sensors required less energy. They conveyed the voice of this world into the cabin. The storm-wind sounds rose against the motionless receptors, filling the bridge with a hoo-click sound like fish arguing.   
     "Wish we'd come down in daylight." Jubilee gazed out a dark port. "We'd be able to see without instruments.   
     "What's the matter, Jubilee?" Bobby was teasing her. "Afraid of the dark?"   
    She didn't smile back. "I'm not afraid of the dark I know. It's the dark I don't that terrifies me. Especially when it's filled with noises like that distress call." She turned her attention back to the dust-swept port.   
    Her willingness to express their deepest fears did nothing to improve the mental atmosphere on the bridge. Cramped at the best of times, it grew suffocating in the near blackness, made worse by a continuing silence among them.   
    It was a relief when Rogue announced, "we've got intercom to engineering again." Warren and the others watched her expectantly as she fiddled with the amp. "That you, Evan?"   
     "Yeah, it's me." From the sound of it the engineer was too tired to snap in his usual acerbic manner.   
     "What's your status?" Warren crossed mental fingers. "What about the fire?"   
     "We finally got it knocked down." He sighed, making it sound like wind over the 'com. "It got into some of that old lubrication lining the walls down on C level. For a while I thought we'd get our lungs seared proper. The combustible stuff was thinner than I though, though, and it burnt out fast before it ate up too much of our air. Scrubbers seem to be getting the carbon out okay."   
    Warren licked his lips. "How about damage? Never mind the superficial stuff. Ship efficiency and performance hindrance are all I'm concerned about."   
     "Let's see . . . four panel is totally shot." Warren could imagine the engineer ticking off items on his fingers as he reported back. "The secondary load-sharing unit is out and at least three cellites on twelve module are gone. With all that implies." He let that sink in, added, "you want the little things? Give me about an hour and I'll have you a list."   
     "Skip it. Hold on a second." He turned to Rogue. "Try the screens again." She did so, with no effect. They remained as blank as a Company accountant's mind.   
     "We'll just have to do without a while longer," he told her.   
     "You sure that's everythin'?" she said into the pickup. Rogue found herself feeling sympathy for Evan and Sam for the first time since they'd become part of the crew. Or since she had, as Evan preceded her in seniority as a member of the _Starjammer's_ complement . . .   
     "So far," he coughed over the speaker. "We're trying to get full ship power back right now. Twelve module going out screwed up everything back here. Let you know better about power everything the fire ate."   
     "What about repairs? Can you manage?" Warren was running over the engineer's brief report in his mind. They ought to be able to patch up the initial damage, but the cellite problem would take time. What might be wrong with module twelve he preferred not to think about.   
     "Couldn't fix it all out here no matter what," Evan replied.   
     "I didn't think you could. Don't expect you to. What _can_ you do?"   
     "We need to re-route a couple of these ducts and reline the damaged intakes. We'll have to work around the really bad damage. Can't fix those ducts properly without putting the ship in a full dry dock. We'll have to fake it."   
     "I understand. What else?"   
     "Told you. Module twelve. I'm giving it to you straight, we lost a main cell."   
     "How? The dust?"   
     "Partly." Evan paused, exchanged inaudible words with Sam, then was back at the pickup. "Some fragments agglutinated inside the intakes, caked up, and caused the overheating that sparked the fire. You know how sensitive those drivers are. Went right through the shielding and blew the whole system."   
     "Anything you can do with it?" Warren asked. The system had to be repaired somehow. They couldn't replace it.   
    "I think so. Sam thinks so. We've got to clean it all out and re-vacuum. If it stays tight after it's been scoured, we should be fine. If it doesn't, we can try metalforming a patchseal. If it turns out that we've got a crack running the length of the duct, well . . ." his voice trailed away.   
     "Let's not talk about ultimate problems," Warren suggested. "Let's stick with the immediate ones for now, and hope that they're all we have to deal with."   
     "Okay by us."   
     "Right," added Sam, sounding as though he was working somewhere off to the engineer's left.   
     "Bridge out."   
     "Engineering out. Keep the coffee warm."   
Rogue flipped off the intercom, looked expectantly at Warren. He sat quietly, thinking.   
     "How long before we're functional Rogue? Given that Evan's right about the damage and that he and Sam can do their jobs and the repairs hold."   
    She studied readouts, thought for a moment. "_If_ they can re-route those ducts and fix module twelve to the point where it'll carry its share of the powerload again, ah'd estimate fifteen to twenty hours."   
     "Not too bad, I got eighteen." He didn't smile, but he was feeling more hopeful. "What about the auxiliaries. They'd better be ready to go when we get power back."  
     "Working on it." Jubilee made adjustments to concealed instrumentation. "We'll be ready here when they're finished back in engineering."  
    Ten minutes later a tiny speaker at Bobby's station let go with a series of sharp beeps. He studied a gauge then flipped on the 'com. "Bridge, Bobby here."   
    Sounding exhausted but pleased with himself, Evan spoke from the far end of the ship. "I don't know how long it'll hold . . . some of the welds we had to make are pretty sloppy. If everything kicks over the way it ought to, we'll retrace more carefully and redo the seals for permanence. You ought to have power now."   
    The exec thumbed an override. Lights returned to the bridge, dependent readouts flickered and lit up, and there scattered grunts and murmurs of appreciation from the rest of the crew.   
     "We've got power and lights back," Bobby reported. "Nice work you two."   
     "All our work is nice," replied Evan.   
     "Right." Sam must have been standing next to the intercom pickup back by the engines, judging by the steady hum that formed an elegant counterpoint to his standard monosyllabic response.   
     "Don't get too excited," Evan was saying. "The new links should hold, but I'm not making any promises. We just threw stuff together back here. Anything new up your way?"   
    Bobby shook his head, reminded himself that Evan couldn't see the gesture. "Not a damn thing." He glanced out the nearest port. The bridge lights cast their faint glow over a patch of featureless, barren ground. Occasionally the storm raging outside would carry a large fragment of sand or bit of rock into view and there would be a brief flash produced by reflection. But that was all.   
     "Just bare rock. We can't see very far. For all I know we could be squatting five metres from the local oasis."   
     "Dream on." Evan shouted something to Sam, closed with a workmanlike, "be in touch if we have any trouble. Let us know the same."   
     "Send you a postcard," Kane switched off . . .   
  



	3. Exploration

**Disclaimer**: I still don't own either Alien or X-Men: Evolution. Please don't sue me kind people at Fox or Marvel.  
  
I'm sorry for such a long delay in updates, but now they should be much more frequent. Hope you enjoy.  
  
Chapter III: Exploration  
  
    It might have been better for everyone's peace of mind if the emergency had continued. With the lights and power back and nothing to do but stare emptily at each other, the five people on the bridge grew increasingly restless. There was no room to stretch out and relax. A single floor pacer would have used all the available deck. So they moped at their stations, downed inordinate amounts of coffee spewed out by the autochef, and tried to think of something to do that would keep their damnably busy brains from concentrating on the present unpleasant situation. As to what lay outside the ship, possibly close by, they elected not to speculate about.   
    Of them all, only Jason seemed relatively content. His only concern at the moments was for the mental condition of his shipmates. There were no true recreation facilities on the ship for them to turn to. The _Starjammer_ was a tug, a working vessel, not a pleasure craft. When not performing necessary tasks her crew was supposed to be spending its blank time of the comforting womb of hypersleep. It was only natural that unoccupied wake time would make them nervous under the best of circumstances, and the present circumstances were something less than the best.  
    Jason could run theories through the computer over and over, without ever becoming bored. He found the awake time stimulating.   
    "Any response yet to our outcalls?" Warren leaned out from his chair to eye the science officer.   
    "I've tried every type of response in the manual, plus free association. I've also let Cerebro try a strictly mechanolog code approach." Jason shook his head and looked disappointed. "Nothing but the same distress call, repeated at the usual intervals. All the other channels are blank, except for a faint, steady crackle on oh-point-three-three." He jabbed upward with a thumb.   
     "Cerebro says that's the characteristic discharge of this world's central star. If anything, or anyone, is alive out there, it's unable to do more than call for help."   
    Warren made a rude noise. "We've got full power back. Let's see where we are. Kick on the floods."   
    Rogue threw a switch. A chain of powerful lights, bright pearls on the dark setting of the _Starjammer_, came to life outside the ports. Wind and dust were more evident now, sometimes forming small whirlpools in the air, sometimes blowing straight and with considerable force across their line of sight. Isolated rocks, rises and falls were the only protrusions on the blasted landscape. There was no sign of anything living, not a patch of lichen, a bush, nothing. Only wind and dust swirling in an alien night.   
    "No oasis," Bobby whispered to himself. Blank and featureless, inhospitable.   
    Warren rose, walked to a port, and stared out at the continuing storm, watched splinters of rock scud past the glass. He wondered if the air was ever still on this little world. For all they knew of local conditions, the _Starjammer_ might have set down in the midst of a quiet summer's day. That was unlikely. This globe wasn't big enough to produce really violent weather, like on Jupiter, say. He drew some consolation from that, realising that the weather outside probably couldn't get much worse.   
    The vagaries of the local climate formed the principal topic for discussion. "We can't go anywhere in this," Bobby pointed out. "Not in the dark, anyway."   
    Jason looked up from his console. He hadn't moved, evidently content physically as well as mentally. Bobby couldn't understand how the science officer could do it. If he hadn't left his own station occasionally to walk around, he'd be going crazy by now.   
    Jason noticed his stare, offered some helpful information. "Cerebro says the local sun's coming up in twenty minutes. Wherever we decide to go, it won't be in the dark."   
    "That's something," admitted Warren, grasping at the least bit of encouragement. "If our callers won't or can't talk further we'll have to go looking for them. Or for it, if the signal's being produced by an automatic beacon. How far are we from the source of the transmission?"   
    Jason studied readouts, activated a ground-level plotter for confirmation. "About three thousand metres, over mostly level terrain as near as the scanners can tell, roughly northeast of our present position."   
    "Composition of terrain?"   
     "Seems to be the same as we determined on descent. Same hard stuff we're sitting on now. Solid basalt with minor variations, though I wouldn't rule out the possibility of encountering some large amygdaloidal pockets here and there."   
     "We'll watch our step, then."   
    Bobby was comparing distance with the suit time in his head. "At least it's close enough to walk to."   
     "Yeah." Jubilee looked pleased. "I don't fancy having to move the ship. A straight drop from orbit's easier to plot than a surface-to-surface shift in this kind of weather."   
     "Okay. We know what we're going to be walking on. Let's find out what we're going to be walking through. Jason, give us a preliminary atmospheric."   
    The science officer punched buttons. A tiny port opened on the side of the Starjammer. It shoved a metal flask out into the wind, sucked in a minute portion of this world's air, and sank back into the ship.   
    The sample was ejected into a vacuum chamber. Sophisticated instruments proceeded to pick it to pieces. Very shortly these pieces of air appeared as numbers and symbols on Jason's console.   
    He studied them briefly, requested a double check on one, then reported to his companions.   
     "It's almost a primordial mix. Plenty of inert nitrogen, some oxygen, a high concentration of free carbon dioxide. There's methane and ammonia, some of the latter existing in the freezing state . . . it's cold outside. I'm working on the trace constituents now, but I don't expect any surprises. It all looks pretty standard, and unbreathable."   
     "Pressure?"   
     "Ten to the fourth dynes per centimetre. Won't hold us back unless the wind really picks up."   
     "What about moisture content?" Bobby wanted to know. Images of an imaginary off-Earth oasis were rapidly fading from his mind.   
     "Ninety-eight double P. It may not smell good, but it's humid. Lot of water vapour. Weird mixture, that. Wouldn't think to find that much water vapour co-existing with the methane. Oh well. I wouldn't advise drinking from any local water holes, if they exist. Probably not water."   
     "Anything else we should know?" Warren asked.   
     "Just the basalt surface, plenty of cold, hard lava. And cold air, well below the line." Jason informed them. "We'd need suits to handle the temperature even if the air were breathable. If there's anything alive out there, it's tough."   
    Warren looked resigned. "I suppose it was unreasonable to expect anything else. Hope springs eternal. There's just enough of an atmosphere to make vision bad. I'd have preferred no air at all, but we didn't design this rock."  
     "You never know." Bobby was being philosophical again. "Might be someone else's idea of a paradise."   
     "There's no point in cursing it," Jubilee advised them. "It could've been a helluva lot worse." She studied the storm outside. It was gradually growing lighter as dawn approached.   
     "I sure prefer this than trying to set down on a gas-giant, where we'd have three-hundred kph winds in a calm period and ten or twenty gravities to cope with. At least we can walk around on this without generator support and stabilizers. You people don't know when you're well off."   
    "Funny that ah don't feel well off," Rogue countered. "Ah'd rather be back in hypersleep." Something moved against her ankles, and she reached down to stroke Destiny's rump. The cat purred gratefully.   
    "Oasis or not," Bobby said brightly, "I volunteer for first out. I'd like a chance for a closer look at our mysterious caller. Never know what you might find."   
    "Jewels and money?" Warren couldn't repress a grin. Bobby was a notorious rainbow chaser.   
    The exec shrugged. "Why not?"   
    "I hear you. Okay." It was accepted that Warren would be a member of the little expedition. He glanced around the bridge for a candidate to complete the party. "Jubilee. You too."   
    She didn't look happy. "Swell. Why me?"   
    "Why not you? You're our designated direction finder. Let's see how good you are outside your seat. He started for the corridor, paused, and said matter-of-factly, "one more thing. We're probably faced with a dead derelict and a repeating beacon, or we'd likely have heard from survivors by now. But we still can't be sure what we'll run into. This world doesn't appear to be teeming with life, inimical or otherwise, but we won't take unnecessary risks. Let's get out some weapons." He hesitated as Rogue moved to join them.   
    "Three is the maximum I can let off the ship, Rogue. You'll have to wait your turn out."   
    "Ah'm not going," she told him. "Ah like it here. It's just that ah've done everything ah can here. Evan and Sam are going to need help with the fine work while they're trying to fix those ducts . . ."   
  
    It was entirely too hot back in the engine room, despite the best efforts of the tug's cooling unit. The trouble stemmed from the amount of welding Evan and Sam had to do and the cramped quarters they were forced to work in. The air near the thermostats would remain comparatively cool, while that around the weld itself would overheat rapidly.   
    The laser welder itself wasn't at fault. It generated a relatively cool beam. But where metal melted a flowed together to form a fresh seal, heat was generated as a by-product. Both men were working with shirts off and sweat streaming down their torsos.   
    Nearby, Rogue leaned against a wall and used a peculiar tool to pop out a protective panel. Complex aggregations of wire and geometric patterns were exposed to the light. Two small sections were charred black. Using another tool, she dug the damaged components out, searched in the loaded satchel slung over one shoulder for the proper replacements.   
    As she was snapping the first of them into place, Evan was shutting off the laser. He examined the current weld critically. "Not bad, if I do say so." He turned back to look at Rogue. Sweat was making her tunic stick to her chest.   
     "Hey Rogue . . . I got a question."   
    She didn't glance back from her work. A second new module snapped into place beside the first, like a tooth being replanted in its socket.   
     "Yeah? Ah'm listening."   
     "Do we get to go out on the expedition or are we stuck in here until everything's fixed? We've already restored power. The rest of this stuff," and he indicated the battered engine room with the sharp wave of one hand, "is cosmetic. Nothing that can't wait for a few days."   
     "Y'all know the answer to that." She sat back, rubbed her hands as she looked over at him. "The captain picked his pair, and that's that. Nobody else can go out until they come back and report. Three out, four on. That's the rules." She paused at a sudden thought, eyed him knowingly.   
     "That's not what's bothering you, is it? You're worried about what they might find. Or have we all misjudged you and you're really a high-minded seeker after knowledge, a true devotee of pushing back the fringes of the known universe?"   
     "Hell, no." Evan didn't seem the least offended by Rogue's casual sarcasm. "I'm a true devotee of pushing back the frontiers of my bank account. So . . . what about shares in case they find anything valuable?"   
    Rogue looked bored. "Don't worry. Y'all both get what's coming to you." She started to hunt through the parts satchel for a certain solid-state module to fill the last remaining damaged section in the open square of wall.   
     "I'm not doing any more work," Sam suddenly announced, "unless we're guaranteed full shares."   
    Rogue found the necessary part, moved to emplace it within the wall. "You're each guaranteed in contract to get a share in anything we find. Both of you know that. Now knock it off and get back to work." She turned away, began to check to make certain that the newly installed modules were operating properly.   
    Evan stared hard at her, opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it. She was the ship's warrant officer. Antagonizing her would do them no good at all. He'd made his point and been rebuffed. Better to leave it at that, no matter how he felt inside. He could be logical when the situation demanded it.   
    Angrily, he snapped the laser back on, started to seal another section of ruptured duct.   
    Sam, handling the power and train for the welder, said to no one in particular, "right."   
  
    Warren, Bobby and Jubilee made their way down a narrow corridor. They now wore boots, jackets and gloves in addition to their insulated work pants. They carried laser pistols, miniature versions of the welder currently being used by Evan and Sam.   
    They stopped outside a massive door well marked with warning symbols and words.   
    MAIN AIRLOCK: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.   
    Warren always found the admonition amusingly redundant, since there could be no such thing as an unauthorized person aboard the ship, and anyone authorized to be aboard was authorized to use the airlock.   
    Bobby touched a switch. A protective shield popped back, revealed three buttons hidden beneath. He depressed them in proper sequence. There was a whine and the door moved out of their way. They entered.   
    Seven vacuum suits were arranged on the walls. They were bulky, awkward, and absolutely necessary for this hike if Jason's evaluations of the outside conditions were even half accurate. They helped one another into the life-supporting artificial skins, checked out each other's suit functions.   
    Then it was time to don helmets. This was done with proper solemnity and care, everyone taking turns making sure his neighbour's seal was tight.   
    Warren checked out Bobby's helmet, Bobby checked Jubilee, and she performed the same service for the captain. They executed this tripartite play with utmost seriousness, the spacefarer's equivalent of three apes grooming one another. Automatic regulators were engaged. Soon all three were breathing the slightly stale but healthy air from their respective tanks.   
    Warren used a gloved hand, activated the helmet's internal communicator. "I'm sending. Do you hear me?"   
     "Receiving," announced Bobby, pausing to boost the power on his own pickup. "You read me back?" Warren nodded, turned to the still sullen Jubilee.   
     "Come on, Jubilee," Warren said, trying to cheer her. "I chose you for your abilities, not your sunny disposition."   
     "Thanks for the flattery," she replied dryly, "and thanks for nothing. Why couldn't you have taken Jason or Evan? They'd probably have loved the chance to go."   
     "Jason has to remain onboard. You know Evan has work to do back in the engine room and couldn't navigate his way out of a paper bag without instruments. I don't care if you curse me every metre of the way. Just make sure we find the source of that damned signal."   
     "Yeah. Wonderful."   
     "Alright, we're set, then. Keep away from the weapons unless I say otherwise."   
     "You expecting friendly company?" Bobby looked dubious.   
     "Hope for the best rather than the worst." He thumbed the communicator's exterior suit controls, opened another channel. "Jason, you there?"   
    It was Rogue who responded. "He's on his way down to the science blister. Give him a couple of minutes."      "Check." He turned to Bobby. "Close inner hatch." The exec hit the necessary controls and the door slid shut behind them. "Now open the outer."   
    Bobby repeated the procedure that had admitted them to the lock. After the last button had been depressed he stood back with the others and waited. Unconsciously, Jubilee pressed her suit back against the inner airlock door, an instinctive reaction to the approaching unknown.   
    The outer hatch slid aside. Clouds of dust and steam drifted before the three humans. The predawn light was the colour of burnt orange. It wasn't the familiar, comforting yellow of Sol, but Warren had hopes it might improve as the sun continued to rise. It gave them enough light to see by, though there was little to see in that dense, particle-thick air.   
    They stepped out onto the lift platform that ran between support struts. Bobby touched another switch. The platform descended, sensors located on its underside telling it where the ground was. It computed distance, halted as its base kissed the highest point of dark stone.   
    With Warren leading, more from habit than formal procedure, they made their careful way onto the surface itself. The lava was hard and unyielding under their suit boots. Gale-force winds buffeted them as they surveyed the windswept landscape. At the moment they could see nothing, save what ran off beneath their boots into the orange-and-brown mist.   
    What an unrelievedly depressing place, Jubilee thought. Not necessarily frightening, though the inability to see very far was disconcerting enough. It reminded her of a night dive in shark-infested waters. You could never tell what might suddenly come at you out of the darkness.   
    Maybe she was rendering a harsh decision too soon, but she didn't think so. In all that shrouded land there was not a single warm colour. Not a green, not a blue; only a steady seepage of yellow, sad orange, tired browns and greys. Nothing to warm the mind's eye, which in turn might ease the mind's thoughts. The atmosphere was the colour of a failed chemistry experiment, the ground that of compact ship excreta. She pitied anything that might have lived here. Despite lack of evidence either way, she had a gut feeling that nothing lived on this world now.   
    Perhaps Bobby was right. Perhaps this was some unknown creature's concept of paradise. If that proved to be the case, she didn't think she cared for such a creature's company.   
     "Which way?"   
     "What?" The fog and clouds had misted over her thoughts. She shook them away.   
     "Which way, Jubilee?" Warren was staring at her.   
     "I'm okay. Too much thinking." In her mind she was visualising her station onboard the Starjammer. The seat and its navigation instrumentation, so confining and stifling under normal conditions, seemed like a small slice of heaven.   
    She checked the line on the screen of a small device attached to her belt. "Over here. That way." She pointed.   
     "You lead." Warren stepped in behind her.   
    Followed by the captain and Bobby, she started off into the storm. As soon as they left the protective bulk of the Starjammer, the storm was able to surround them on all sides.   
    She stopped, disgusted, and operated suit instrumentation. "Now I can't see a goddamn thing."   
    Jason's voice sounded unexpectedly in her helmet. "Turn on the finder. It's tuned to the distress transmission. Let it lead you and don't mess with it. I've already set it myself."   
     "It's on and tuned," she shot back. "You think I don't know my own job?"   
     "No offence," the science officer responded. She grunted, stalked off into the mists.   
    Warren spoke towards his own helmet pickup. "Finder's working okay. You sure you're receiving us clear, Jason?"   
    Within the science blister on the lower skin of the ship, Jason switched his gaze from the dust-obscured figures moving slowly away to the brightly lit console in front of him. Three stylised images stood out sharp and clear on the screen. He touched a control and there was a slight whine as the science chair slid a notch on its rails, aligning him precisely with the glowing screen.   
     "See you right now outside the bubble. Read you clear and loud. Good imaging on my board here. I don't think I'll loose you. Mist isn't thick enough and there doesn't seem to be as much interference down here on the surface. Distress signal is on a different frequency so there's no danger of overlap.   
     "Sounds good." Warren's voice sounded unnatural over the blister speaker. "We're all receiving you clearly. Let's make sure we keep the channel open. We don't want to get lost out here, not in this stuff."   
     "Check. I'll be monitoring your every step. Won't bother you unless something comes up."   
     "Check here. Warren out." He left the ship channel open, noticed Jubilee was watching him from behind her suit's dome. "We're wasting suit time. Let's move."   
    She turned wordlessly, he attention going back to the finder, and started off again into the dancing muck. The slightly lower gravity eliminated the burden of suits and tanks, though all still wondered at the composition of a world so small that could generate this much pull. Mentally, Warren reserved time for a geological check in depth. Maybe that was Evan's influence, but the possibility of this world holding large deposits of valuable heavy metals couldn't be ignored.   
    The Company would of course claim any such discovery, since it was being made with the Company equipment and on Company time. But it could mean some generous bonuses. Their unintentional stop here might prove to be profitable after all.   
    Wind drove at them, hammering them with dirt and dust, a solid rain.   
     "Can't see more than three metres in any direction," Jubilee muttered.   
     "Quit griping." That was Bobby.   
     "I like griping."   
     "Come on. Quit acting like a couple of kids. This isn't the place for it."   
     "Wonderful little place, though." Jubilee wasn't intimidated. "Totally unspoiled by man or nature. Wonderful place to be . . . if you're a rock."   
     "I said, that's enough." She went quiet at that, but continued to complain under her breath. Warren could order her to stop talking, but he couldn't stop her from grumbling.   
    Abruptly, her eyes brought information that momentarily took her thoughts away from their steady condemnation of this place. Something had disappeared from the screen of her finder.   
     "What's wrong?" Warren asked.   
     "Hang on." She made a slight adjustment to the device, made difficult because of the bulky gloves. The line that had vanished from the face of the finder reappeared.   
     "Lost it. I've got it again."   
     "Any problems?" A distant voice sounded in their helmets. Jason was voicing concern.   
     "Nothing major," Warren informed him. He turned a slow circle, trying to locate something solid in the storm. "Still a lot of dust and wind. Starting to get some fade on the finder beam. We lost the transmission for a second."   
     "It's still strong back here." Jason checked his own readouts. "I don't think it's the storm. You might be entering some hilly terrain. That could block out the signal. Watch yourselves. If you loose it and can't regain, switch the finder to trace my channel back towards the ship until you can pick up the transmission again. Then I'll try to direct you from here."   
     "We'll keep it in mind, but so far that's not necessary. We'll let you know if we run into that much trouble."   
     "Check. Jason out."   
    It was quiet again. They moved without talking through the dust-laden, orange limbo. After a while, Jubilee stopped.  
     "Lose it again?" Bobby asked.  
     "Nope. Change of direction." She gestured off to the left. "That way now."   
    They continued on the new course, Jubilee keeping all her attention on the finder's screen, Warren and Bobby keeping theirs on Jubilee. Around them the storm grew momentarily wilder. Dust particles made insistent ticking noises as the wind drove them against the faceplates of their helmets, forming speech patterns within their brains.   
    Tick, tick . . . let us in . . . flick, pock . . . let us in, let us in . . .  
    Warren shook himself. The silence, the cloud-enveloped desolation, the orange haze; all were beginning to grow on him.  
     "It's close," Jubilee said. Suit monitors simultaneously informed the distant Jason of their suddenly increased pulse rate. "Very close."   
    They continued on. Something loomed ahead, high above them. Warren's breath came in short gasps now, from excitement as much as exertion.   
    Disappointment . . . it was only a large rock formation, twisted and grotesque. Jason's guess about the probability of them entering higher country was proven correct. They took temporary shelter beneath the stone monolith. At the same time, the line vanished from Jubilee's finder.   
     "Lost it again," she told them.   
     "Did we pass it?" Bobby studied the rocks, tried to see over them, and could not.   
     "Not unless it's underground." Warren leaned back against the rock wall. "Might be behind this stuff." He tapped the stone with a suited fist. "Or it might just be a fade due to the storm. Let's take a break and see."   
    They waited there, resting with their backs to the scoured wall. Dust and mist howled around them.   
     "Now we're really blind," said Bobby.   
     "Should be dawn soon." He adjusted his pickup. "Jason, if you hear me. How long until daylight?"   
    The science officer's voice was faint, distorted with static. "Sun's coming up in about ten minutes."   
     "We should be able to see something then."   
     "Or the other way round," Jubilee put in. She didn't try to hide her lack of enthusiasm. She was damn tired and they had yet to reach the source of the signal. Nor was it physical weakness. The desolation and eerie colouring were tiring her mind. She longed for the clean, bright familiarity of her console.   
    The increasing brightness didn't help. Instead of raising their spirits, the rising sun chilled them by turning the air from orange to blood. Maybe it would be less intimidating when the feeble star was completely up . . .   
  
    Rogue wiped a hand across her brow, let out a tired sigh. She closed the last wall panel she'd been working on behind her after making certain the new components were functioning properly, put her tools back in the satchel's compartments.   
     "You ought to be able to handle the rest. Ah've finished the delicate stuff."   
    "Don't worry. We'll manage," Evan assured her, keeping his tone carefully neutral. He didn't look in her direction, continued to concentrate on his own job. He was still upset over the chance that he and Sam might be left out of whatever find the expedition might make.   
    She started for the nearest up companionway. "If y'all run into trouble and need help, ah'll be on the bridge."   
     "Right," said Sam softly.   
    Evan watched her go now, saw her lithe form disappear upward. "Bitch."   
    Jason touched a control. A trio of moving shapes became sharp and regular, loosing their fuzzy halos, as the enhancer did its job. He checked his other monitors. The three suit signals continued to come in strong.   
     "How's it going?" Rogue's voice came over the intercom.   
    Quickly he shut off the screen, hit his respond. "All right so far."   
     "Where are they?"   
     "Getting close to the source. They've moved into some rocky terrain and the signal keeps fading on them, but they're so close I don't see how they can miss it. We ought to hear from them pretty soon.   
     "Speaking of that signal, haven't we got anything fresh on it by this time?"   
     "Not yet."   
     "Have you tried putting the transmission through ECIU for detailed analysis?" she sounded a touch impatient.   
     "Look, I want to know the details as badly as you do. But Cerebro hasn't identified it yet, so what's the point in my fooling with it?"   
     "Mind if ah give it a shot?"   
     "Be my guest," he told her. "Can't do any harm, and it's something to do. Just let me know the instant you hit on anything, if you happen to get lucky."   
     "Yeah. If ah happen to get lucky." She switched off.   
    She settled a little deeper into her chair on the bridge. It felt oddly spacious now, what with the rest of the bridge crew outside and Jason down in his blister. In fact, it was the first time she could recall being alone on the bridge. It felt strange and not altogether comfortable.   
    Well, if she was going to take the trouble of working her way through ECIU analysis, she ought to get started. A touch of a switch filled the bridge with that tormented alien wail. She hurriedly turned down the volume. It was disquieting enough to listen to when subdued.   
    She could easily conceive of it being a voice, as Jubilee had suggested. That was a concept more fanciful than scientific, however. Get a grip on yourself, woman. See what the machine has to say, and leave your emotional reactions out of it.   
    Aware of the unlikelihood of having any success where Cerebro had failed, she activated a little-used panel. She couldn't bear to sit and do nothing on the empty bridge. It gave her too much time to think. Better make-work than none at all . . .   
  



End file.
